Top Gun is a burnout; the cinematic equivalent of having a hairdryer blasted in your face for two hours, this is a remarkably unfocused film with only a string of embarrassing clichés to recommend it.

Sorry folks but I really despise The Cruiser's ego trilogy. Cocktail is bad, as is Days Of Thunder, but this is where it all began; the most ‘eighties’ movie of the eighties and by far the worst. Want to know why? Well here goes.

Opening with officially the most eighties moment in cinema (yellow lens and slow-mo vs a pompous Harold Faltermeyer score) Top Gun is full of high fives, banal dialogue, embarrassingly humorous ‘emoting’ and a plot that simply refuses arouse interest no matter what your station in life.

Cruise plays Pete ‘Maverick’ (groan) Mitchell, a cocky (check), smiling (check), erm...maverick (check) with an attitude and problem with authority (check...hey, quadruple whammy!).
He wants to be a fighter pilot like daddy so he hops on his motorcycle and heads to the US Navy Fighter Weapons School to train with “the best” (a phrase repeated ad nauseum) to be “the best” (see?) in San Diego.

His abrasive cockiness wins him the growing admiration of old friend Goose (a relatively likable Anthony Edwards) but comes into conflict with the ideals of fellow pilot (not to mention moody, resentful swine) Iceman (Val Kilmer basically playing himself).
On his journey to be “the best”, Maverick meets and falls in love with a foxy instructor (Kelly McGillis), irritates Iceman with his skills and loses Goose in an accident that would be tragic if it wasn’t so hilariously implausible.

And er…..that’s it.

Everything is here; the blonde love interest with a brain (NO ONE is buying McGillis as an Aeronautics Expert), the watchful mentor (Skerritt at his most comatose, given to lamenting risible "you remind me so much of your father" dialogue), the nemesis (Kilmer, desperately trying to be as intimidating as his beyond-bad haircut) and the death of a good friend (quite why Edwards - the most natural actor here - is bumped off is anyone's guess! To recover with an emotional punch that the rest of the movie sorely lacks? Probably).

The acting is some of the most cringe inducing ever put on camera; director Tony Scott (who shoots EVERYTHING in dark rooms with sun-drenched shutters) is so pre-occupied with moody, evocative style that he completely forsakes the vapid drama and risible actions of his struggling cast.
Cruise’s CV is littered with appalling moments (his drunk scene in A Few Good Men, the reaction to his friend’s death in Cocktail, his walking scenes in Born On The Fourth Of July to kindly name but three) but in Top Gun he blasts into the sh*tosphere with the afterburners on full. (when Goose dies he feigns grief and mutters "oh no")
McGillis has virtually nothing to play and does it unconvincingly, Meg Ryan is gratingly chirpy as Goose’s wife (and blubbingly tearful when he dies), Skerritt’s dialogue somehow gets worse (“I was in ‘Nam”) and is delivered with absolutely no irony and Kilmer adds yet another performance of staggering blankness to a career dominated by staggering blankness (exception that disproves the rule: Heat).

This is all SO dire that it serves to cancel out the brilliance of the aerial footage; although it wobbles between realistic and ludicrous, surely these adrenaline-pumping moments were the movie's selling point? Well they would be if Scott didn’t botch the continuity so relentlessly.
He isn’t served by the plot either; a training school as the backdrop for an action movie? Who cares!? Thankfully Bruckheimer (sans Simpson) aquired a brilliant sense of the absurd and was able to deliver it wholesale in the likes of Con Air and The Rock.

McGillis looks too old for Cruise to successfully acquire and he's surely far too stupid for her anyway. The scene where he serenades her is oddly (and irritatingly) reminiscent of his poetry scene in Cocktail. All wooden posturing and easy grins, delivered without any of the self-awareness that would make us root for him.
Frankly he's just a smug, disagreeable fool who we pray will fail but all know that he will (unfortunately) triumph in the end. No justice.
And surely that’s why Top Gun fails: here is a character that no one likes and actor who simply cannot make him at all interesting.

That said, there are some tremendous moments for bad movie buffs to savour: The bad character establishment of Cruise racing a fighter plane along a runway on his bike whilst shouting “WOO-HOO!!!” (he’s a crazy guy who likes planes right?), Kilmer’s awful attempt at emotion when Goose dies, and more insane sound-bite dialogue such as “I feel the need, the need for SPEED!” (cue immediate high five and a “WOO” delivered as an excited afterthought)

Also special is the classic “son, your ego’s writing cheques your body can’t cash!” A line so BAD that they used it (in its entirety) in Hot Shots!

The music is also exceptionally bad but it’s unsurprising that everyone raved about it back in the eighties. Flashdance? Dirty Dancing? Two more soundtrack dominated movies where nothing much happens beneath the loud guitars that blare on the hi-fi.
Harold Faltermeyer contributed terrific scores to Beverly Hills Cop and Fletch, but seems to be running on auto-pilot here (pardon the pun). The songs are meant to stir the blood but instead stir the stomach and have you reaching for a vomit bag (especially Berlin's TERRIBLE Take My Breath Away and the AOR-lite Danger Zone by the soundtrack meister Kenny Loggins).

Anyone questioning my dedication to Epinions can now think again; I had to sit through this abomination again and although I have reviewed mostly horror movies lately, this may well be the scariest.

“I don’t like you because you’re dangerous” Kilmer tells Cruise.

Well I’m telling you (however eloquently) that you won’t like Top Gun because it sucks.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older